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Ancient One
The Ancient One was a name (one of many, in fact) for a fallen demon who existed during the New Age. In his natural state, he was around eight feet tall with red-tinted skin, sporting a tail and horns. He was capable of transforming himself into other forms, however. The Curse of the Fate Shifter The Ancient One had once been part of a group of greater beings charged with orchestrating and maintaining the delicate clockwork of human biological mechanisms, but he was eventually stripped of this noble role and imprisoned within the bowels of the Earth. He was rediscovered the the Dwarf race, whose penchant for burrowing through the planet inadvertantly freed him. The Dwarves and Elveswere forced to band together to stop him, in a rare show of cooperation for the two races. The Dwarves entombed him in a slab of granite, while the Elves enchanted his prison using a talisman that would ensure that the demon could not be accidentally freed. In the many years to come, the story of the Ancient One fell into legend and was all but forgotten. At some point prior to unctual year 3891, Mirabel Miller learned of the story of the Ancient One—though she had interpreted text describing him as a "beast" quite literally, assuming him to be a dog of some sort. She befriended an Elf named Elladan, getting close enough to him to become entrusted with one of the Elf talismans. She then used the talisman to break the enchanted seal and release the Ancient One. It had been her intention to convince the Dwarves to allow her to use the digger machine, on the pretense of chasing down the Ancient One—when in fact she had hoped to gain access to the digger in order to excavate sufficient mass from the center of the Earth to prevent its collision with the Moon. The Dwarves would later find the talisman and conclude from its presence that the Elves had sabotaged the tomb. After being released, the Ancient One laid waste to the Dwarf workers present. Lacking much of his power, he sought a susceptible human whom he suspected he could manipulate into unnaturally tampering with past events undoing the imprisonment, thus restoring his power. He found a victim in the form of "Four" Wheeler, whom he approached in the wake of the death of one of Four's friends. Appearing to Four in the form of a human nobleman, the Ancient One offered Four the use of a relic called the fate-shifter, which would enable him to revisit past events and rewrite them. Desperate to undo the circumstances that had resulted in such a tragedy, Four was more than willing to accept the gift on the condition that he would be required to do the Ancient One a small, unspecified favor. The Ancient One watched as Four, who now possessed the unmitigated power to completely rewrite his history, made change after change, progressively making his situation worse. Only then did the Ancient One intercede, offering Four the chance to undo the conditions that led to the Ancient One's imprisonment. This meant the Ancient One would have full command of all his powers—and would effectively cancel out Four's acqusition of the fate-shifter, and all the subsequent changes he made. Four initially agreed, but the Ancient One watched as he attempted to subvert the mission, encountering Mirabel before she used the talisman and creating an alternate reality in which the Ancient One had not been freed. When the Ancient One transcended the etherial plane to confront Four about reneging on the deal, Four responded by destroying the fate-shifter. The Ancient One dissipated as reality became unraveled; his ultimate fate remains unrealized. The Veil of Souls While discussing the fate of Four and Mariposa, Arienne mentioned the Ancient One in passing while talking with Brian Devonhyre about a possible means through which magic might be used to slow down the aging process. Behind the Scenes The Curse of the Fate Shifter strongly implies that the Ancient One is, in fact, the Devil—or, more to the point, that the theological Devil was just one of the many identities assigned to the Ancient One over the years. Forever the dragon refers to the Ancient One as an "old serpent" and "the father of all lies," two additional euphemisms for the Devil. Category:Villains Category:Main Characters Category:Demons